LIMA, Peru (AP):
THE MOST volatile contender in today's presidential election is a former army officer who has pledged to punish a corrupt élite and move this Andean nation into the political camp of leftist Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez.
But Ollanta Humala, who has spooked investors with vows to intervene in Peru's free-market economy and radically redistribute its wealth, must get past a pair of tough opponents.
Lourdes Flores, the first woman to make a serious bid for the presidency, and Alan García, whose silver-tongued oratory has made many Peruvians forget his disastrous 1985-90 presidency, were running neck-and-neck with him in the latest polls.
Famed novelist Mario Vargas Llosa appealed to Peruvians to reject Humala, urging them "not to be so blind, so amnesiac, so foolish" as to elect another authoritarian leader six years after Alberto Fujimori's autocratic decade-long presi-dency collapsed.
"Maintain democracy or go to dictatorship. That is what is at play in these elections," he said recently.
No candidate in the field of 20 was expected to win 50 per cent of the vote Sunday, meaning a runoff was likely in late May or early June between the top two finishers.
Humala, a 43-year-old former lieutenant colonel, burst onto the political scene when he led a small bloodless military rebellion in 2000 in an isolated mountain region a month before Fujimori's corruption-riddled government fell.
He has preached a nationalist message Peruvians first giving preference for Peruvian-owned businesses over foreign investors, imposing higher taxes on foreign companies, and spending the money on the poor.
Humala's two-decade army career has solidified his image as a tough caudillo -his close-cropped hair and lean body help to give him a military look- in a country where studies show most people do not think democracy necessarily improves their lives.
"Ollanta is seen as the president who is going to come with his whip and bring order," said Cecilia Blondet, a historian and former minister of women's affairs.
In his final campaign rally Thursday night in Arequipa, his southern Andean stronghold, Humala vowed to take down the "fascist dictatorship of the economically powerful," drawing a roar from his supporters, most of them from his base of dark-skinned mestizos.
He attacks Peru's traditional parties as corrupt servants of the economic elite and pledges to reduce their power.
Humala openly admires the 1968-75 leftist dictatorship of Gen. Juan Velasco, who took over Peru's media, implemented a largely failed agrarian reform that expropriated land from wealthy Peruvians and forged close ties with the former Soviet Union. He is enthusiastically endorsed by Venezuela's Chavez, who is seeking to extend his influence after gaining an ally in Bolivia with Evo Morales' December presidential victory.
Peru's middle and upper classes are frightened by Humala's rhetoric, but so are many working-class Peruvians fortunate enough to have something to lose -a job, a small shop, a trade.
Yet for the half of the country that lives on the margins, without access to decent schools, health care or potable water, Humala has captured sympathies, especially in rural areas. The poor and dispossessed have responded to his message that the political establishment is greedy and corrupt.
